I think they were referring to a natural right not necessarily a legal right.
If Washington had been ambushed at Valley Forge and the Continental Congress rounded up and executed, what would those natural rights have been worth? I don’t know if you can realistically call something a right when your ability to exercise it is predicated on your membership in a victorious military campaign.
Like everyone has a natural right to jump off a cliff if they want
I think you might be confusing natural rights with natural laws. Like, if someone puts up a fence around the edge of a cliff, what does this do to your natural rights? If someone throws you in a psych ward for attempted suicide, what then?
Texas has the natural right to secede
Again, I don’t think this is evident. If the Texas state legislature/governor proposed plans to incorporate as an independent nation, how would the populace respond inside the state? Would people meekly just go along for the ride, would they flee the state en mass, would they revolt, would they join the Texas National Guard in anticipation of fending off a response from the US military?
How many people would have to die before the question was settled? This feels far from “natural” by any definition of the term. It strikes me as entirely bound up in the decisions and actions of large bodies of individuals at odds with one another.
If Washington had been ambushed at Valley Forge and the Continental Congress rounded up and executed, what would those natural rights have been worth? I don’t know if you can realistically call something a right when your ability to exercise it is predicated on your membership in a victorious military campaign.
I think you might be confusing natural rights with natural laws. Like, if someone puts up a fence around the edge of a cliff, what does this do to your natural rights? If someone throws you in a psych ward for attempted suicide, what then?
Again, I don’t think this is evident. If the Texas state legislature/governor proposed plans to incorporate as an independent nation, how would the populace respond inside the state? Would people meekly just go along for the ride, would they flee the state en mass, would they revolt, would they join the Texas National Guard in anticipation of fending off a response from the US military?
How many people would have to die before the question was settled? This feels far from “natural” by any definition of the term. It strikes me as entirely bound up in the decisions and actions of large bodies of individuals at odds with one another.